James Barrie was born in Beverley, East Yorkshire, and went to school in Pocklington. He studied civil engineering at Leeds University before spending five years overseas, teaching English and working as a technical editor.
Since moving to York in 1999, he has worked as an English language teacher, bridge inspector, stay-at-home-dad, civil engineer and geotechnical engineer. He has also done courses in creative writing at York College, York University and the Arvon Foundation.
In May 2012 he began writing The York Cat Crime Mysteries, a planned series of nine books featuring feline sleuth Theodore. The First of Nine: The Case of the Clementhorpe Killer was published in 2016 and the sequel Rear Garden, or The Cat Who Knew Too Much, in 2018.
